Colony

How to spell colony

6 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce colony

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does colony mean?

1. nounA territory or group of settlers controlled by or living apart from a parent country.
2. nounA community of animals, plants, or microorganisms of one kind living closely together.

Colony in a sentence

• The former colony gained its independence in the last century.

• The scientist studied a thriving colony of ants beneath the patio.

• Early settlers founded a small farming colony near the river.

• A bacterial colony formed on the surface of the agar plate.

Where does colony come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin colonia, meaning 'a settlement' or 'a farm worked by settlers', which was built on colonus, 'a settler or tiller of the soil'. That noun in turn grew from the verb colere, 'to cultivate, till, or inhabit', the same root that gives us 'cultivate' and 'culture'. The original Roman colonia was quite literally a community of farmers planted on conquered or frontier land, so the agricultural sense came first and the political sense of territory ruled by a distant power followed naturally. English took the word in during the late 1300s, partly through Old French colonie, and over time it broadened to cover groups of people, and later groups of organisms, living together in one place. The single l and single n trip people up because the word sounds heavier than its spelling, but remembering the farming root colonus helps fix the lean middle.

How the word is built

• colon- (from Latin colonus: settler, farmer)
• -y (noun suffix)